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Most CPU Intensive Game

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Late game Civ 5 with huge map and max civs does some damage to weaker cpu's

Definitely noticed an improvement from my Q6600 to 2500k.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Mostly due to the fact that their multi-threading is rubbish, but if you want playable frame rates in large battles you better be prepared to get an i7 to 5Ghz.
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Why i7, if the multithreading is rubbish? i5 at 5Ghz should be just as good

Anyway, PlanetSide 2 >>> any other game I've ever played in terms of CPU intensity
 
Pick just about any emulator of more modern console systems.

Or if you want REALLY CPU intensive, there was an article of 100% exact emulation of the SNES.

Planetside 2 isn't CPU intensive at all. It's just poorly threaded. It doesn't even peg a single core on my machine most of the time.
 
Planetside 2 is def. CPU limited. I know people with 4-4.4Ghz 3570s and high end GPUs that have 25fps in some scenarios. GPU is also not fully utilized so that is an easy clue where the problem is (i5s are just fine, it's the bad coding that's causing the problems)
 
For single thread I know Shogun 2 chugs on my system even though it should fly.

For multi-thread, BF3 64 multiplayer is pretty hard to beat.
 
inf64 said:
Planetside 2 is def. CPU limited. I know people with 4-4.4Ghz 3570s and high end GPUs that have 25fps in some scenarios. GPU is also not fully utilized so that is an easy clue where the problem is (i5s are just fine, it's the bad coding that's causing the problems)
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They have a lot of problems in the engine right now that need optimization. In the large battles when i get about 25fps, my GPU, CPU, Memory, and Network utilization are nowhere near maxed out.
 
BF3 64 player is CPU intensive.
On anything above a dual core, PS2 is CPU deficient
 
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SC2, Civ V, and any other high unit count RTSes. Also MMORPGs with BIG raid numbers.

Some games like GTA IV, scales well in performance with threads. But performance is horrible, and doesn't really stress the GPU. So its horribly coded anyway. If they made GTA IV so its not well threaded, but had good performance, it would be better coding. GTA IV is what I call coding for multi-threading at the expense of real world performance. I wonder how many other games like that are out there?

IPC is still very important for multi-threaded games though because of Amdahl's Law. In games, I bet the sequential portion of code takes up quite a bit of overall.
 
inf64 said:
Yeah Planetside 2 is very badly optimized and it looks pretty "meh" for that kind of hardware requirement.
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The default max settings are lower than the truly customizable "ultra" settings that you have to manually input, and the game can look pretty incredible after messing with such things, however frame rates will plummet, I typically go from 70-80 average with highs above 100 and minimum frame rates in the 30s-40s to an average frame rate in the 40s-50s with a high in the 60s-70s and lows in the 20s. That's default high with some tweaking (like turning off AO and fog junk) to customized "ultra" settings


lehtv said:
To all people saying BF3, SC or Civ V - you haven't played PS2.
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SunnyD said:
Planetside 2 isn't CPU intensive at all. It's just poorly threaded. It doesn't even peg a single core on my machine most of the time.
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Yeah, we could even have a whole new discussion on which game is most CPU intensive from the CPUs POV - ie which games actually put the most pressure on the CPU, vs. which games need to be the most CPU intensive but are just too inefficient. While a game BF3 will measurably load up an i7, its not exactly CPU bottle-necked, whereas a game like PS2 is easily the most CPU bottle-necked game I have played in years.


njdevilsfan87 said:
No way. That game only utilizes like 40% of my CPU. They need some work done in the optimization department.
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Acanthus said:
While it does utilize quad core, it doesn't peg any single core of mine with the rig in sig.

I'm probably GPU bottlenecked though.
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Many games will do that, if not most. It seems like most developers just don't care and/or are incapable of producing an efficiently coded game, so that even if the CPU isn't being effectively utilized that doesn't mean the game is not CPU limited.



PrincessFrosty said:
Mostly due to the fact that their multi-threading is rubbish, but if you want playable frame rates in large battles you better be prepared to get an i7 to 5Ghz.
Click to expand...
lehtv said:
Why i7, if the multithreading is rubbish? i5 at 5Ghz should be just as good

Anyway, PlanetSide 2 >>> any other game I've ever played in terms of CPU intensity
Click to expand...

An i5 should be just as good, but its often enough not the case. As far as PS2 is concerned I don't know, although I can do some testing with my 3570K vs. my 3930K. That being said, there are some games that are very inefficient at utilizing an i5s four cores, and yet can still receive a tangible benefit from an i7s HT or even s2011 with 6 cores (Tribes Ascend is a pretty big offender in that regard, where its woefully inefficient beyond a couple threads however it will still perform faster and faster on up with higher end CPUs). Granted, I would wager in a majority of cases a high enough clocked i5 will ultimately be just as good.
 
Acanthus said:
While it does utilize quad core, it doesn't peg any single core of mine with the rig in sig.

I'm probably GPU bottlenecked though.
Click to expand...

That usually means its not utilizing quad cores. Even a game with a single thread can show activity on all 4 cores when looking at task manager. Because that's just how the windows scheduler works, but if you were to add up the usage, it would be around 25%. Which means a single thread.
 
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